Teen girl's death spurs changes and charges

PHILADELPHIA  A city agency that was faulted by a grand jury in connection with the death of a teenage girl in its care is working to repair systemic problems that have led to other fatalities, its new commissioner said Friday.

Nine people were charged on Thursday in connection with the girl's death, including two social workers for the city agency, the Department of Human Services.

According to the grand jury report, the girl, Danieal Kelly, 14, starved in a dark room in a West Philadelphia apartment in August 2006. At the time, she weighed 42 pounds, about the weight of a normal 5-year-old, because her mother, Andrea Kelly, had stopped feeding her enough to live on.

Danieal, who had cerebral palsy, had lost almost all ability to talk or move and was severely neglected by her mother, who had eight other children and was embarrassed to be seen in public with her disabled daughter, the report said.

"She was left to die in her own waste, developing huge, putrid bed sores that covered her back," the report said. The sores were "so deep and rotted that they went down to the bone."